Hi folks, here we are again! A whole month has gone by and we have virtually crossed Canada heading in an easterly direction. When I last wrote we were at a place called Kamloops in Alberta. A nice friendly town, mainly used as a passing through/stop over kind of place but we liked it so much we stayed for nearly a whole week. The North and South Thompson Rivers flow through on their way from the Rockies. Very clean but incredibly cold, however it was very refreshing just to sit waist high in it to keep cool in the 30+ degrees heat.

From Kamloops we headed north east to Jasper in the Rockies. It was all very busy being the height of the tourist season. We drove along the Ice Fields Parkway taking us along the top of the Rockies through Lake Louise and on to another nice resort town called Banff. We took the opportunity to go white water rafting, a first for me. I really enjoyed it. When we were on the bus going (most of the journey was spent reading and signing disclaimers), someone asked if the water was vanilla or chocolate. I must confess I thought someone was trying to be clever but it turns out that this is recognised terminology for the water. It is white when full of dissolved minerals from the melted ice and brown when churned up from mud after a storm. Anyway we thoroughly enjoyed our day on vanilla water. Lake Louise was also very beautiful and we enjoyed an aerial view from the cable car. The resort was packed full of tourists, mainly Japanese. Mike tells me that this is because a Japanese soap opera was filmed at the hotel.

From Banff we continued east to Calgary and then a detour north to Drumheller in the middle of the Badlands. They are known as the Badlands due to the difficulties the early explorers had negotiating the terrain. Drumheller is also famous for a dinosaur museum and the amazingly high number of dinosaur fossils found here. We enjoyed the museum and spent a few nights on a provincial park next to the river. To get there we had to take a ferry across the water. It was operated by a system of overhead pulleys. For those Norfolk folk it was very reminiscent of Reedham Ferry except it was free. Whilst taking a walk alongside the river I accidentally trod on a snake! I don’t know if it was poisonous or not, luckily it wasn’t interested in me it just slithered off through the grass. Due to the dinosaur connection the whole town of Drumheller had a dinosaur theme. Many businesses and private gardens had model dinosaurs on display. The biggest was outside tourist information.

Drumheller was the first place that we were challenged to a game of pool. It turns out that Canadians are extremely honest. They play pool slightly differently to us as if you pot a ball by chance its not allowed. Intentional potting only. This was very hard to live by as fluke shots are practically the only way I get to ever pot a ball! Drumheller was also fortunate enough to have a Waldorf Hotel (see below).

Drumheller saw the start of some amazing thunderstorms which created wonderful lightning displays across the night sky. We continued east from Drumheller into the prairies. Very flat but it didn’t seem as dull as it was on the American side. (Sorry Americans). The great part about the prairies was being able to watch the storms moving across the sky as we were driving along. The downside of all these storms was cooler weather afterwards. We stopped in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan for a few days. This town had started out as a settlement of tents and had been called Pile o’ Bones. As it grew in size and stature it was renamed Regina after Queen Victoria. The legislative building was very impressive piece of architecture overlooking the park. Regina was a very pleasant city with loads of trees, all of which had been planted by man as there were no naturally occurring trees when it was first settled, just prairie grassland. We took a tour around the Royal Mounted Police Museum. The RCMP training college is here and we also watched the Sergeant Major’s parade at lunchtime. The most exciting part was trying to see what the procedure was for hats that blow off.

We really enjoyed going around the museum and learning the history. On our last day in Regina it started to rain, much to our disgust it didn’t stop for four days and nights and it was torrential!

We had hoped to stop at a lake north of Winnipeg famed for its beaches and sand dunes but due to the weather we saw little point so we continued east through Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba and into Ontario. The first town we came to in Ontario was called Kenora on The Lake of the Woods. Our first stop was at tourist information to find out a little bit about the place. Imagine how pleased we were when they asked us if we would like to be Tourists of the Week! We had our photo taken for the local rag and received a wonderful bag of goodies which really enhanced our stay. There were about 100 Canadian Dollars (£50) worth of vouchers for shops and restaurants; a bag of wild rice and cookbook; a Kenora T shirt and some insect repellent. Our vouchers included a trip on the MS Kenora which took us around the lake. It was very interesting learning some facts about the area. With our complimentary museum tickets we also enjoyed learning the history of the area. It had originally been called Rat Portage derived from the translation of the Indian name. The early settlers didn’t like the name much and had wanted to change it for a while. It wasn’t until The Maple Flour Company declared that they wouldn’t have a mill there if the name remained. (They didn’t want the word Rat to appear on the flour bags) So it was all down to marketing that the name change took place very soon afterwards. Another item which tickled us was a letter from an hotelier to the council in 1905. He was writing to complain about pools of water outside his hotel. In the letter he said he felt that having a ‘malaria hatchery’ outside would surely discourage the tourist trade. Malaria or not incentives to keep tourists are alive and well in Kenora. Life in Kenora is well adjusted to people living on the mainland or on one of the numerous small islands. Safeway had moorings as well as a car park. After leaving Kenora we continued east and got stopped for speeding. Our first traffic violation this side of the Atlantic. We were very lucky that the police officer took pity on us being tourists as he put that we had been doing 80km per hour on the ticket not 94. Thereby reducing the fine by the equivalent of about £90.

We continued at a more sedate pace around Lake Superior until we got to Thunder Bay. We stopped for a short while at the Terry Fox memorial which is at a viewing point near the road. This was placed in honour of an incredible young Canadian marathon runner. He had had a leg amputated due to cancer and decided to raise money for cancer research. His goal was to cross Canada but sadly he became too ill near Thunder Bay and had to stop. He ran for 3339 miles doing 26miles a day.

We decided not to stay in Thunder Bay but had to turn around to get some fresh supplies. By the time we finished it was getting late so we went to find a Wal-Mart to stop in for the night. We drove in and saw a European motor home in the car park. Incredibly it had English plates so we parked right on top of them so they wouldn’t be able to avoid talking to us. When we returned from the shops we saw two people photographing out motor home, then of course we got talking. Here is the truly INCREDIBLE part. They live just up the road from us! Can you believe it? We couldn’t but had a wonderful time chatting with them and picking up some tips. Soif we hadn’t had the hold up with the speeding ticket, stopped for the shopping or been to see Terry Fox we would never have met them. What a coincidence.After Thunder Bay we visited Sault San Marie which is famous for having enormous locks for the big ships to pass through on their way between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Lake Superior is 7m higher than Lake Huron so the locks were built in the 1890’s to open up new shipping opportunities. Unfortunately we couldn’t really see them from the Canadian side. We had planned to cross over to the US but we had heard that they are on their highest alert at the border. Our motor home would have been searched by the Canadians and the Americans and faced with that hassle we decided to continue along the Canadian side. So here we are at a place called Orillia about 100km north of Toronto. Ontario has been very beautiful with all its lakes, islands, trees and rugged scenery.

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